As I sit at my kitchen table, looking over at the clock reading 4:15am, I am pondering. All the different faces of grief.
The most obvious one is sadness. The feeling of loss. This is the one that shows up constantly. Hearing a song that reminds you of a loved one gone too soon. Seeing a funny post that you want to share. Hearing a band that you think they would like. It's like a pop up thunderstorm. Out of nowhere the dark clouds appear and you are running for cover. This is the one that everyone is very familiar with.
The next..... guilt. It's amazing how this one will tear you apart. What could I have done? Why didn't I reach out more. Hindsight is 20/20. We should be fair with ourselves. Here's what we forget. How many times have you had a disagreement and then days later, you were able to repair the relationship. This is the norm. When we lose someone, those regular day to day interactions are forgotten. All you are left with is the what if's. It's a terrible place to be. All of a sudden all of those arguments are YOUR fault. There is no one else to blame.
Doubt. Do I have the right to mourn my brother when we rarely spoke? Did he even love me? Would he be mad at me for being sad since I ran when he was alive? This one has been eating me alive. I loved my brother so very much. He was one of my favorite humans. He could also be cruel. Was I selfish for taking care of me and putting distance there? On this side, it doesn't feel like I should have. I feel like, once again, I should have sacrificed myself. I know this though, he knew that if he would have called me or my sister, we would have been there in a second. For that, I'm angry.
Which leads me to the next, anger. I am so angry. I am mad that we grew up in a house that was dysfunctional at best. I'm sure that there are so many things that happened to him that I didn't even know about. Here's the real kicker of this one. The trauma that I experienced has created gaps in my memory. I remember some moments in childhood, some with horrible clarity. As I sit here, I struggle to remember all the precious memories I had with my brother. They were there. You can see it in the pictures. The remembrances of laughing together. All three of us bonded in our fear and need to survive. I have years that I have blocked out. It didn't help that, for whatever reason, my Dad would single me out. In that, with my brother looking up to him like the hero he was to him, he was taught to be hateful. Unfortunately, I was the outlet for that.
Denial. No one tells you that when someone truly close passes, you are constantly bombarded by doubt. Did that really happen? But really? See, that person doesn't die once. Every single time your messed up brain glitches, you have to tell yourself again, "Yes, your brother died. Yes, he took his life." It's painful. So, when this happens I remember when I found out. "John Michael is dead." That is a sentence that I will always remember. Even after working through it in therapy, it holds a piece of my brain hostage. It's like a photo. I can see myself sitting in my therapist office. The woman sitting in front of me, waiting for her therapist to call her back. She's reading a magazine and occasionally she glances over at me and my erratic behavior. I read the text and immediately my vision blurs. I don't feel well. I text back, "What?!??!" The response, "He shot himself." The call to my sister, "Is this real?" That is the first thing she said to me. Confusion and dare I say.... Denial?
Christmas is in two days. This Christmas, I won't text him. I won't receive anything from him. I will celebrate with my family and wonder how my parents are doing. How is my sister doing? The closer Christmas gets the sadder I become. Which leads me back to anger. The funny thing is that I thought the stages of grief would go in order and then when I got through all the stages, it would diminish. I'm not so naive that I would imagine they would go away entirely. What I didn't realize is that it's a circle. You go through the stages in rapid succession and then they start again. I feel like I'm on an emotional roller coaster with no end in sight. It's hard to talk about. Talking about it brings it right back to the forefront of my mind. Funny thing is.... it's always there anyway. I just try and bury it as best I can.
Suicide is a terrible terrible thing. It causes your regular "truths" to become jumbled. Life isn't always the killer. Sometimes it's not a car accident, heart attack, stroke..... Sometimes, your loved one decides that life is too hard and shuts the book themselves. And I'm left here wondering, should I be worried about my other loved ones? Are they going to do the same thing? What can I do to keep it from happening? As I side bar, I want to say this very unpopular opinion. We all have our days of "Suicide," don't we? When we take part in something that is slowly killing us..... Some of us, well, we kill ourselves slowly. Think about that one for a blip. I'm not innocent in that. Don't get me wrong. I have partook in substances that could kill me. In my sadness, I would drink incessantly, trying to drown out the pain. Slowly drinking myself to death. The day I walked into my first AA meeting, well, that was me putting down the gun.
4:46am. I might as well get some coffee. So sorry for this post that is laden with sadness right before the beloved holidays. I needed to write to get these things out of my brain and here where I can leave them. What I really should be doing is wrapping the presents that I have been procrastinating wrapping.
Happy Christmas Eve's Eve everyone. Hold your loved ones close.
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